Cold night at the reservoir

TristanP

I spent about an hour last night at the local reservoir braving the cold and wind trying some astrophotgraphy with my new 20D. No moon and perfectly clear skies - it was quite beautiful. Discovered several things:
1. The 50/1.4 almost perfectly frames the main part of Orion (cuts off the arms)
2. Manual focusing at infinity is difficult.
3. Star trailing at 300mm starts after anything more than 2-3 seconds.
4. Mirror slap has to be avoided at longer focal lengths by using the "hat trick" (or mirror lockup).
5. There's still way too much light pollution in the area to get good dark sky shots.

Here's one of only a couple that I'm happy with. It looks much better without smugmug's compression:



f/2.8, 8 sec, iso 400, 50mm